HERE AND CHAPTER I. AT THE EDGE OF ITALY. BOSCO CHIESANUOVA is a Veronese summer resort, 3,000 feet above the sea, and five hours' drive from Can Grande's city. The actual distance is about twenty miles; but it is collar-work nearly the whole way. Once past the fortified hills outside Porta Vescovo, the road mounts between the limestone walls of Val Pantena, through chestnut groves, and across fat uplands to the first spurs of the Alps. Pine-woods rise ahead parted by tortuous ravines; bold ridges stretch forth into the plain. B One skirts great bluffs of limestone-younger brothers of the Tirolese Schlern-seamed by horizontal lines of caves, and the ground all about yawns with quarries of red Veronese stone. Hedges give place to loose stone walls; houses are roofed, gardens fenced by slabs of the same mottled pink stone, resembling monstrous slices of Castile soap. Magnified Sussex downs spread in huge billows about us, sink into wooded hollows, and rise eastward to a lofty ridge capped by the cone of Purga di Velo. In spite of the Italian sky, Lombard plain and the grand bulwark of Garda's mountains climbing in slow curves to misty summits, downs, chalk-pits, and oakcopses give a familiar English aspect to the landscape. So on for miles; then the way is steeper, pines are taller and the bones of the world break through the turf in limestone reefs. There is a glimpse of grey peaks to the north above an amphitheatre of forest, houses gather near the gaunt, white barracks of the Alpine regiment"; and here at last is Chiesanuova, the capital of the "Thirteen Communes" formerly |